Truth Can Be a Chain
by Lady Mear
Summary: Oneshot. Sequel to Truth Hurts. A few days after the discovery and everyone is trying to cope in their own way.


**Truth Can Be a Chain**

**Author's Notes:** Not mine. Once again, this is mostly based on the TV series (anime) personalities, although I have included characters from the manga. Sequel to Truth Hurts. There maybe a third instalment or there may not. I'd like to resurrect Seras for a final meeting. So enjoy and please review!

Walter made his way down to the basement, towards the room once assigned to Seras Victoria. In his hands he held a small plaque made of what looked like steel. He was looking for the former fledgling's master and he knew he wouldn't find him in his own room.

Alucard lay on the coffin bed, staring up at the bed's vaulted lid. His hands were crossed on his chest, his shirt open at the neck and his coat and hat nowhere to be seen. He moved his head slightly as the butler walked in the door. There were black bags under his eyes: Quite a feat for the near immortal creature. He looked like he hadn't showered in days, or rested for that matter.

"You need to eat." Walter said.

Alucard grunted in response.

"You're not going to help anyone acting like this."

Alucard ignored him.

"The Wild Geese leave today. Are you at least going to say goodbye?"

"I don't think Bernadotte will want to see me."

There wasn't much Walter could say to that. The mercenary had made his opinions of Alucard and Integral well known in the days since the discovery of Seras' suicide. He and his men were leaving because he wouldn't put his people under the authority of a person who didn't even notice when _their own_ people killed themselves. No one in the mansion was dealing with the situation well, but Alucard seemed to have taken it the worst.

With a sigh, Walter handed Alucard the small plaque. The vampire looked at it like it might bite him for a moment before reaching out and taking it. His fingers traced over the words,

'_Seras Victoria,_

_A light in the darkness that we failed to keep burning.'_

Clutching the plaque to him, he rolled away from Walter and curled up into a ball. Of everyone in the mansion, only Walter had ever truly seen Alucard break down and even then, it was only once, nearly forty years ago. Ironically, it was when the No Life King had mistakenly believed he had killed his friend. He sat down beside him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder, soothing the trembling as Alucard finally let go. There wasn't anything the old man could say.

"I dream about her… I see her trapped in a dark place, crying out for help and no matter what I do, how powerful I am I can't save her. I can't reach her." The trembling increased until it had turned into shaking. "I woke up yesterday with the control system released to level 2 and I don't even remember doing it. What did I do Walter? How could I just have shrugged her off like that?"

"No one is perfect, my friend. No one sees everything or knows everything."

"Bernadotte tried to tell me, but I wasn't willing to listen. I was so angry at him for trying to tell me how to treat her. And he was right! God, Walter he was right." Alucard fell silent then and all Walter could do was keep rubbing his back and murmuring nonsense syllables, very much like he had done for Integral the night before.

Eventually the shaking was reduced to trembling and then even that stopped in the silence of the room and as the sun peaked at noon, Alucard fell into a restless slumber. Walter sat beside him leaning over slightly to wipe the bloody tears from his face; years of close contact with the vampire letting him read the expressions that passed across it. The true sleep of the undead, where they died at dawn in truth was something that few vampires could afford to indulge in, despite the increase in power and the deeper rest it afforded. Alucard was usually more then willing to take advantage of his position at Hellsing to use it as the devil had intended, but today, it was the more human nightmare-plagued sleep that he had fallen into. Walter sighed, Alucard was punishing himself and he knew from past experience that he wouldn't stop just because he was being stupid.

Leaving the basement, Walter made his way back to the living levels of the building, his thoughts turning from the vampire below him to his mistress above him and he found his feet leading him towards the stairs. He had almost reached them when a voice from behind him called, "Walter!"

Pip Bernadotte stood near the entrance to the basement.

"Yes?"

"How is he?"

"I assume you mean Alucard?"

"Oui"

"Not good. This has hit him hard."

Pip looked at the door again and then made his way over to the retainer, his face held the same look it usually did when he was going to ask a question he wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer to, "Why?"

Walter blinked, "Why what?"

"Why does he care?"

The smaller, basement kitchen used to store blood was quiet. The chair Walter pulled out made an almost unnatural amount of noise as it scrapped across the floor.

He put the bottle he had retrieved from one of the cupboards down onto the table and waited until the blonde had sat down across from him and put the glasses beside the Scotch.

Leaning back a few moments later, glass in hand, Walter took a moment to fiddle with his monocle before saying, "Why does Alucard care now that Seras is dead or what does he care at all?"

Pip shrugged, "Either, both."

"I see." Walter took another sip, "The way Hellsing deals with vampires tends to make one think of them as two-dimensional beings. They are not. They have all the emotions that they had when alive as well. Alucard once told me that vampires' emotions are more intense. They become better at controlling their emotional responses as a kind of self-defence. I don't know why Alucard turned Seras. I don't think he knows himself what drew him to her. I know that that day in Chedder Village, he had no choice but to shot through her."

He took another sip before continuing, "He always cared, in his own way. At the Tower of London, he held off healing himself to heal her first. When dealing with Bonnie and Clyde, he chose his method of dealing with them to give Seras the best chance of being able to take the shot."

He looked slyly at the Frenchman, "I know his main issue with you was how close you were to her."

Pip sighed, "Not close enough in the end. If I had of ignored Alucard's threat…"

"Then he would have killed you had he found out. Even if you knew what condition she was in, it is doubtful that you would have had the chance to tell anyone."

Pip clenched his glass tight into his hand.

"Alucard is not used to being wrong. He is also not used to being questioned. Most of the people he had dealt with in the last hundred years have been soldiers. Seras is one of the few civilians he has had any contact with. I don't think he took that into consideration."

"Oh. I never thought of that."

"Not did Alucard." The butler shrugged.

Suddenly he asked, "Why do you have a French accent? I have heard you speak with several different ones before and you are now using French words as well?

Pip blinked at the sudden change in topic and then smiled wishfully, "I'm French. It used to annoy Seras that she couldn't understand me when I spoke French and it became a game of sorts." He shrugged, "Now it's just habit. I keep using little words and she's pick them up and start using them back to me after a few goes."

They were silent for a few moments before Pip asked the question that everyone wanted the answer to, "Why didn't he sense her? He's her master, but he didn't even realised she was dead."

"Seras had been able to stop Alucard 'dipping' into her mind for several weeks. He complained a few months ago that it felt more like she was dead then hiding from him when she did it because he couldn't feel _anything_. She couldn't leave just a portion of her mind blocked like he learned to do first. It was all or nothing." Walter shrugged, "If she hadn't of spent the last few months shielding so tight, she might have realised that he did care for her and that he didn't see her as a failure."

Pip raised and eyebrow and Walter shrugged, "Didn't see her that way as much as she thought."

"Why did it take so long to find out?" Pip almost sighed the words rather then spoke.

"Many reasons." Walter sighed, "Alucard has a habit of sulking for days at a time, he stays down in the basement with his door locked, phasing into the kitchen to get food once a day. Sir Integral's attitude to Seras was always to treat her as an extension of Alucard. Mostly though, because Seras set it up so no one would come looking for her. This is the slowest part of the year and one where Alucard and Integral would put her absence down to her trying to hold onto her humanity rather then a suicide attempt" he laughed humourlessly, "Or suicide success as this case is."

They lapsed into silence then.

"TO SERAS!" the yell went up. Peter Fargasson had raised his glass with the rest of the men, although personally he felt like he wasn't entitled to it. Even the newcomers who had been the ones most jumpy around the vampire girl had been shocked at her death. It was so easy to forget that vampires could have feelings, easier to treat them as monsters. Like they had treated Seras.

Pickman dropped down into the seat beside him, absently swirling the red wine in his glass. Fargasson was uncomfortably reminded of blood. "They don't deserve to mourn her." He said in a low voice.

"What do you mean?"

Pickman laughed hard, "They're the people who drove her out of the First Action Unit. They're the ones who forced you to reassign her. Now they stand there and pretend they were her best friends. Bloody bastards, the lot of them."

Fargasson blinked slowly, "You sound like you blame them."

"I do" Pickman took a mouthful of wine, "Victoria was determined to keep some shreds of her humanity. Refusing to drink blood and fighting the vampires. When Walter talked her into drinking the blood, fighting for Hellsing became her last method of proving she wasn't a monster. Then those arseholes took it away from her. They as good as murdered her!"

"What about me then? I took responsibility for reassigning her."

Pickman snorted, "You did what was best for the company. _They_ did what they wanted." Pickman threw back the last of his wine and stood up, "I'm going back to the mansion. With those mercenaries gone, place will be quieter."

He left then, and Fargasson watched him go, wondering not for the first time if he was truly fighting on the side of the angels. Another toast went up, this one to 'Sarah Veronica.' Pickman was right. Bastards, the lot of them.

Integral Wingates Fairbrook Hellsing sat in her office, staring blankly at the sheet of paper in front of her. Seras Victoria was dead and her thoughts were alternating between the usual guilt that one of her people had been killed and the urge to dance and sing. The dichotomy of her own emotions was bad enough, but the overpowering sense of loss coming from Alucard had added a new dimension to it. For the first time since the dratted girl had come to Hellsing, she was forced to acknowledge that Alucard hadn't turned her purely for spite. The older vampire had honestly cared for her. For some reason that made her furious.

It made her even more furious that Walter was subdued and quiet where once he had been strong and confrontational. The Wild Geese had left and she couldn't even blame them. God knows if she was in charge of them, she would have had her company out of there faster then Bernadotte had. The rest of the men were out drinking to Seras' memory. Well, Pickman was probably starting a fight. Off all the officers he was the closest to both the vampires. Not a 'friend' exactly, but someone even Alucard had nothing bad to say about. In all honesty, he seemed to like the former SAS captain. Fargasson was blaming himself, something else that got her ire up as well.

It wasn't that she was exactly 'happy' Seras was dead. But the girl was a nuisance and she hadn't been looking forward to trying to use the ritual on her. Going off of her great grandfather's journals, even on a willing vampire, it wasn't an easy ritual to use. Relief… yes, she was relieved that Seras was no longer an issue. The line from Seras' letter came back, running through her mind like a fright train with a driver on crack, '_I don't want to be the slave of a monster worse then I am_'. She wasn't a monster…

An old adage came back to her as if her brain was determined to prove her wrong, running the faces of everyone she had ordered killed or killed herself through her minds eye as the words repeated, _if you stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back._ Integral dropped her head into her hands and cried. She cried for Seras Victoria, who she had failed. She cried for Alucard who she was failing even at that moment. She cried for Walter who had had to watch her make all the mistakes she had been cautioned about. She cried for herself and the realization of her guilt. Most of all, she cried for the innocence lost to war and darkness and the knowledge that even the shiniest knight can tarnish.


End file.
